Digital & print resources available

IRIS offers a variety of resources for the
seismological community and general public
including online interactive materials,
regular newsletters, brochures,
webinars, past event materials. We also offer
digital copies of our proposals and reviews
for download.

Plotting your S-P location results in Google Earth

If you are looking to modernize your S-P lab, or are tired of having your students struggle to use a compass to draw circles on flat maps with poor results, this simple Java-based program is your answer. Through a simple, task-specific interface students enter the location information for three stations and the distance that they determined the quake was from each. Students then click "Okay". The program then writes a KML file named "small_circles.kml" in the folder where the program is stored. This KML file can then be opened in Google Earth as shown in the image above.

Related Lessons

To understand plate tectonic processes and hazards, and to better understand where future earthquakes are likely to occur, it is important to locate earthquakes as they occur. In this activity students use three-component seismic data from recent earthquakes to locate a global earthquake.

LessonNovice

Related Interactives

Each station on the interactive map recorded an earthquake with a characteristic seismogram. Roll over the stations to see the epicenter triangulated. Touch buttons to watch movie of seismic waves, or touch "Walk-run" button to see wave travel can be demonstrated with a class.

InteractiveNovice

Related Animations

We use exaggerated motion of a building (seismic station) to show how the ground moves during an earthquake, and why it is important to measure seismic waves using 3 components: vertical, N-S, and E-W. Before showing an actual distant earthquake, we break down the three axes of movement to clarify the 3 seismograms.

A travel time curve is a graph of the time that it takes for seismic waves to travel from the epicenter of an earthquake to the hundreds of seismograph stations around the world. The arrival times of P, S, and Surface waves are shown to be predictable. This animates an IRIS poster linked to this animation.

AnimationNovice

Related Fact-Sheets

Knowing precisely where an earthquake occurred is an important piece of scientific information. It can help seismologists identify and map seismic hazards. It is also a fundamental piece of information necessary for facilitating studies of Earth's internal structures. This fact sheet provides an overview of the S-P process to locate an earthquake.